Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Catholic schools and vocations to the priesthood - The example of Don Bosco

January
31st, Feast of St. John Bosco

This week, the Catholic Church
in the United States of America celebrates Catholic Schools Week. The US
Bishops ask us to consider the great blessing which Catholic schools are to our
Church and to our community at large.

During Catholic Schools Week,
we call to mind the fact that Catholic schools benefit not only the families
who send their children there, but the whole Church and all society. Every
Catholic, even if he has no children in Catholic schools (even if he has never
had children in the schools), should see Catholic schools as his schools – every Catholic benefits
from Catholic schools, and every Catholic has a duty of supporting Catholic
schools.

Today, I would like to point
out one way in which every Catholic benefits from Catholics schools: Catholic
schools produce vocations to the priesthood and religious life. It is
particularly fitting that we consider this benefit today, the feast of St. John
Bosco – the schools which he founded produced over six thousand vocations to
the priesthood during his life-time (and countless more since his death).

St.
John Bosco inspired over 6,000 vocations to the priesthood before his death

St. John Bosco, the founder of
the Salesian Society, was born in a small hamlet near Catelnuovo, Piedmont,
Italy on 16 August 1815. He died on 31 January 1888, and was canonized by Pope
Pius XI in 1934.

Don Bosco was filled with a
great charity for the poor boys of Turin and other cities, and so he dedicated
his life to the education and care of street children, delinquents and other poor
youths. His devotion to St. Francis de Sales (which led him to dedicate his
society to this great Doctor of the Church) directed him to employ gentler
teaching methods based on love and kindness rather than punishment.

In addition to providing good education,
safety, and religious instruction to the boys, St. John Bosco’s schools
provided the young men with the opportunity of discerning a vocation to the
priesthood or religious life. The statistics are amazing:

“At the time of Don Bosco's death in 1888 there were 250
houses of the Salesian Society in all parts of the world, containing 130,000
children, and from which there annually went out 18,000 finished apprentices. […]
Up to 1888 over six thousand priests had gone forth from Don Bosco's
institutions, 1,200 of whom had remained in the society.” (From the Catholic
Encyclopedia)

It is often said that a priest
may be happy if he helps two young men to discern a call to the priesthood –
one to replace himself, and another to serve for the expansion of the Church.
St. John Bosco directly helped six thousand young men to answer the call! All
this was possible only through the Catholic schools that Don Bosco founded. Who
can doubt the importance of Catholic schools?

St. John Bosco was himself very
pleased with this good work accomplished through his schools, and he wrote (in
1883, when there were still many more vocations to come): “I am happy now! I
have careful statistics drawn up and we have found that more than two thousand
diocesan priests [not counting the religious] have come from our houses. Let us
thank the Lord and his holy Mother for having given us the means to do all this
good.” Further studies after the Saints death confirmed that the number of
vocations was even higher than he had realized!

An
example: The Diocese of Great Falls – Billings (my diocese)

The role which Catholic schools
play in helping a man to discover and answer the call to the priesthood hits
very close to home for me. I myself first thought of becoming a priest through
the influence of the Catholic schools in my home town of Billings, MT. Could
God have used some other means? Surely. But, in point of historical fact, I
(and the Diocese of Great Falls – Billings) owe my vocation to the Billings
Catholic School System, and to Billings Central Catholic High School in
particular. Thus, in my own life, the connection between Catholic schools and
priestly vocations is most significant.

Further, though it is only a
small example from a small diocese, I cannot help but mention the impact which
Catholic schools have had on vocations to the priesthood in recent years for
the Diocese of Great Falls – Billings, in eastern Montana. I will speak to this
connection from my experience as a seminarian and priest for the Diocese.

It has been about ten years
since I entered the seminary, and I have personally known every seminarian for
the Diocese of Great Falls – Billings since that time. In the past ten years, twelve
young men who had attended some level of Catholic schools entered the seminary
for our Diocese. Now, some have left, some have been ordained, and the largest
group of them are still in the seminary – but, the point is that twelve men
have entered seminary to discern this call after having attended some level of
Catholic school education.

While we would certainly desire
this number to be greater, it will be good to compare this statistic with the
number of men in the past ten years who have studied as seminarians for our diocese
without having gone to any level of Catholic schools: Two. In the past ten
years, there have only been two men who did not go to Catholic schools and who
studied as seminarians for the Diocese of Great Falls – Billings.

Now, to be fair, I am not
including in these statistics a couple of special cases. There have been a
couple of older gentlemen who entered the seminary in their fifties, but these
are obviously special cases (and, in point of fact, they may well have gone to
Catholic schools in their youth, but I do not know for sure). Additionally, our
diocese has ordained one man who used to be an Episcopalian priest.

However, setting these exceptional
cases aside, the Diocese of Great Falls – Billings has a ratio of 12 to 2 in
favor of Catholic schools, when it comes to vocational discernment in recent
history. And this is all the more significant considering that our diocese has
only a very limited number of Catholic schools!

Considering that there are far more
than ten times as many Catholic boys in eastern Montana who attend public
schools than those who attend Catholic schools, the fact that only two from the
public schools have entered the seminary (as opposed to the twelve who had
attended Catholic schools) is simply astonishing.

Who can reasonably doubt the positive
impact which Catholic schools have had in producing priestly vocations in the
Diocese of Great Falls – Billings? Can there be any doubt that promoting Catholic schools in this diocese will help to produce more vocations?

Catholic
schools: A part of the solution to the priest shortage

Now, I’m not going to say that
Catholic schools are the whole answer to gaining more vocations to the
priesthood. Indeed, I do not even claim that the Catholic schools are the most
important factor – other realities, like family life, have a far greater impact
on a young man’s ability to discern a call to the priesthood.

Still, there can be no doubt
that Catholic schools have played and will continue to play a significant role
in producing priests for the Church. For this reason, we all should thank the
good Lord for the gift of Catholic schools, and we should remember that
(whether or not we have a child in the schools) every Catholic school is our Catholic school.

7
comments:

After saying thanks, I remembered that we've had two young women from Great Falls Central who are currently in formation in religious communities. One with The Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT) and the other with the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Please continue to support our Catholic Schools and to pray for holy vocations to priesthood and religious life.

I believe your observations demonstrate the crucial role of genuinely Catholic education in the life of the Church, which in turn shows how misguided the policies of reducing parish subsidies and secularizing content really are. When my kids' pediatrician (who earns a great deal more than the average parishioner) speaks of the high cost of tuition for his kid to attend Catholic high school, this is an indication of a serious problem. Fr. Barron points out that we have a "smart" religion - which means that adequate evangelization & catechesis cannot be achieved in a CCD ptogram meeting an hour a week. Thank God for the growth of orthodox Catholic media, which can provide remediation, but cannot substitute for a vibrant Catholic culture whose foundation is the parochial school & minor seminary where this is the primary goal and mission, and from which vocations naturally flow.

I found this blog entry after 'Googling' the keywords Catholic Schools and Vocations. Our little rural Catholic School is being closed by our Diocese. We had 100 children registered for the fall and they required 120. If they continue to close schools, where will vocations come from? They ask us to pray for vocations continually and do amazing work through our local Catholic Charities (raising nearly 11 million dollars/year) yet didn't Christ say you will always have the poor? Will we always have vocations to the priesthood and religious life?